Volume 31, Number 17 · November 8, 1984
Birth of a Nation
By George M. Fredrickson
Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy
by Eric Foner
Louisiana State University Press, 142 pp., $14.95
The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry, 1850–1890
by Steven Hahn
Oxford University Press, 340 pp., $29.95
White Land, Black Labor: Caste and Class in Late Nineteenth-Century Georgia
by Charles L. Flynn Jr.
Louisiana State University Press, 196 pp., $20.00
During the 1960s and 1970s, historians of the American South concentrated on the institution of slavery. Debates on the economic performance of the plantation, the relations between masters and slaves, and the results of slave efforts to create a culture and community of their own were vigorous and sharply defined. At times these scholarly disputes were noticed by the press, and authors of ambitious, interpretative books on slavery even appeared on TV talk shows to defend their views. During the past few years the slavery debates have subsided although they have not been fully resolved. But much was learned, and a consensus developed on one crucial point: the Afro-American slaves were now recognized as historical actors in their own right and not simply as the hapless victims of forces beyond their control.
Review, 4172 words
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